Chasing Sirens
by The Skilled Assassins
Summary: The story of Reno and Rude before they became Turks, how they met and how they eventually came to be members of the most renowned group in all the world. Please read we have many talented authors in here!


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Chapter 1

The Voices

It was early on a damp Tuesday morning. I sat crouched in the top of the clock tower, waiting and watching. It was just 6:59, in about one minute the target should be arriving.

I'd observed the man's routine for the past two days. Every morning he arrived in his silver car at exactly 7:00. It took him two minutes to get up to his office and he didn't come back out again until 12:00 for lunch, then he left the building for home at 4:30. The man, whose name I oddly didn't know, was president of Worldtech Communications, one of the most powerful companies in the world. That would soon change.

The vice president had been knocked off three days ago, which had prompted my client to hire me to take out the head honcho. And sine the president had no heirs and a new VP hadn't been appointed yet this would throw Worldtech into chaos.

Sure enough right on time the silver car pulled up in front of the building, and he stepped out in his long gray coat, carrying a leather briefcase. Four bodyguards flanked him, for the VP had been killed right on the sidewalk. But they weren't prepared for me.

As the car started to pull away the president and his entourage began their walk up the ten feet of red carpet to the doors. I aimed and slowly followed the president all the way to the door. Just as he reached the door I made my move, with one pull of the trigger my job was done. The president's back sprang a leak of red as he crumpled to the ground. 

Goodbye Worldtech.

My rifle was silenced so the guards didn't realize what had happened for a few seconds. I easily could've killed them all but that'd just be a waste of bullets. Instead I used their stupidity for my escape.

I quickly concealed my weapon and ran for the ladder down to the ground. Just before I opened the door to the street I donned my grubby street garb so I didn't attract any unwanted attention.

I walked down the street hunched over like a cripple, with the tattered rags draped over me. As I looked back I saw three police cars pull up to the Worldtech building, and two cops break into the clock tower. I quickly turned away and sped up my pace a little. The job was done, now it was time to collect the pay.

****

Apparently my client owned the restaurant, or he'd made a deal with the owner. Because that's where we'd agreed on for the pick up. As I entered Platinum Pizza I threw the peasant garb in the trash and walked in looking like a half normal citizen.

I walked up to the counter and began the sequence.

"Hello, I'd like a large pizza with cheese, ham and pickles. On second though no cheese, onion instead." I recited; this was supposedly the phrase that would get me the money.

"Thank you sir that will be 17.09" said the counter worker.

I handed them twenty gil and in return received 3.5 million, large coins of course. A year ago this would've bothered me, getting paid over a counter for taking a man's life. But now it didn't faze me a bit.

I didn't bother hang around for the pizza, not exactly my favorite toppings. Instead I walked right out the front door with my money and headed for my apartment.

****

I reached my dingy little apartment later that evening. Upon entering my humble abode I immediately put the day's earning in the safe. The safe was a rusty old fireproof metal box hidden under one of the floorboards.

I counted up what I'd saved, almost 50,000,000, not bad. And with today that was 53. I'd only spent a couple hundred at the bar. Three rounds for everybody, and about five for myself. I'd been watching my spending though, one night I'd blown a whole job's pay at the bar.

Suddenly I realized I hadn't cleaned out my weapon. That thing had earned me quite a lot of money, and I'd never let go of it. After spending an hour making sure it was in the best possible shape I put the gun away.

I trudged over to the little bathroom and took about five painkillers, one for each drink. Although it didn't hurt yet it sure as hell was gonna hurt later.

I looked in the mirror, to admire my good looks. But instead found a 19-year-old kid with deep circles under his eyes, gaunt cheekbones from lack of food and long, messy red hair. Not satisfied with what I saw I splashed some water on my face and looked again.

This time I saw the face of my kid sister, Angie. Beautiful red hair tied up in pigtails, ice blue eyes sparkling, cheeks gaunt from no food. This was the way she'd looked the last day I saw her, before she disappeared. That day was 13 years ago.

Then the voices came.

_She's dead Reno, 13 years? I mean come on._

_No she's still alive. She could fend for herself, get a job…_

_She was only 4 when she vanished, who would want a 4 year old?_

_She could find something to do, she'd survive somehow…_

_Face it, she's dead. Either that or in some child labor factory._

__Angie's face was still there, but something was different; her mouth was moving. There was no sound but he could read her lips.

"Reno, please help me! Reno…"

And a single, solitary tear trickled down her cheek. Then suddenly it turned red like blood, she was crying blood.

_Dead._

__"No!" roared Reno in agony.

He grabbed the bottle of painkillers off the sink pedestal and hurled it with all his strength at the mirror.

Angie's face shattered into a thousand pieces and vanished, just like she had, so many years ago. 

One piece still remained, defiantly wedged in one corner. Reno looked at himself once more, seeing the same scared underfed adolescent from before. But this time he was crying, crying blood like Angie.

Slowly he moved his thumb and index finger up his cheek. They came away covered with warm red blood. One of the mirror fragments had cut his cheek.

Slowly he sank to his knees. That night he slept on the cold bathroom floor. His thick blood sluggishly flowing through the gaps in the tiles like a crimson river.

****

As Reno's day was ending, the investigators' day was just beginning. They'd been called in for the Worldtech case, which had turned into quite a catastrophe. Don Korenzo and his new partner had been called in to work on the homicide case. Korenzo had been at this for almost five years, and his partner one, so this was nothing new to them. Some one else was dead, which was never a good thing, but never a rare one either.

The two sat in a small room, which almost had the feel of an interrogation chamber. The sole pieces of furniture were a banged up card table and two rusty metal folding chairs. Korenzo looked over the papers with the dim light of an overhanging lamp while his partner poured some caf for each of them.

"So what's it this time?" Korenzo asked rhetorically as he rubbed the sleep grit out of his eyes, the call had come in the middle of the night.

"Victim was Erwin Stoff, president of Worldtech. Shot this morning at 7:00 as he was walking from his car to the Worldtech tower. Whoever did this is no amateur." Observed Korenzo from the report filed earlier that morning.

"One ambitious bastard all right." Muttered his quiet partner, baldhead illuminated eerily in the dim light.

"Yeah well people will do just about anything for the right money." Remarked Korenzo as he sipped some caf.

"Sniper I presume?" 

"Of course, that's the easiest way for a coward, besides they gotta be original. Says here the VP of Worldtech was taken out earlier this week right on the street. They wouldn't want to make it look like the two are connected." Said Korenzo as he tilted his chair back a tiny bit.

"Could be the end of the company." Uttered the baldheaded partner, Rude.

"Hell that's right!" cried out Korenzo, causing his chair to come out from under him, leaving him on the hard, cold cement floor.

"…"

Rude didn't offer a hand or anything, just stared at him with his arms folded.

"The two cases wouldn't even have to be connected! Say one guy took out the VP, and was gonna take out the head bigwig but then another guy came along! The possibilities are endless." Shouted Korenzo, still on the floor in a heap.

He had no idea how close he was.__

_ _

_Note- All right that is the first in a new series of mine. Which will tie my two prior stories: Close to the Ground and Parachutes together. And I will try to write some more In the Absence of the Sun soon. But with it being the end of the school year things can be kind of hectic. Adios!_


End file.
